Xenophobia across the class divide: South African attitudes towards foreigners 2003–2012

ABSTRACT

In May 2008 anti-immigrant riots in South Africa displaced more than a hundred thousand people. Despite the media attention that the riots attracted, there has been no study that presents trend data on anti-immigrant sentiment for the period after 2008. This paper uses data from the nine rounds of the South African Social Attitudes Survey over the period 2003–2012 to fill this gap and test the success of government commitments to reduce anti-immigrant prejudice. The results reveal that attempts to combat xenophobia have been ineffectual, with anti-immigrant sentiment prevalent and widespread in 2012. Afrophobia was observed, with a majority of citizens identifying foreign African nationals as the group they least wanted to come and live in South Africa. The government is advised to urgently address the alarming and widespread pervasiveness of anti-immigrant sentiment in South Africa.

KEYWORDS:

• Immigrants
• South Africa
• xenophobia
• social contact
• human capital
• economic self-interest

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank the Coordinators of the South African Social Attitudes Survey (SASAS), Benjamin Roberts and Jarè Struwig at the Human Sciences Research Council's (HSRC) Democracy Governance and Service Delivery research programme, for their cooperation and support during the writing of this article. This publication is part of an existing programme of work that is being undertaken by myself and the Coordinators of SASAS investigating xenophobia in contemporary South African society.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Steven Gordon is a Doctoral Intern at the Democracy Governance and Service Delivery research programme, Human Sciences Research Council and has been involved in the South African Social Attitudes Survey since 2012. Currently studying for a post-graduate doctorate degree from the University of KwaZulu-Natal, his research topic focuses on anti-immigrant attitudes in South Africa. He has published on trade unions, public opinion, international migration and subjective well-being in Commonwealth & Comparative Politics, South African Journal of Political Studies, Third World Quarterly and Journal of Modern African Studies.

Notes

1. The riots began on 11 May 2008 when violent attacks began in Alexandra: a township north of Johannesburg. The rioting quickly spread to many separate settlements across the province of Gauteng before moving to communities across the country (Crush et al., 2008; Desai 2008). During the period of the rioting more than 150,000 people were displaced, 670 were wounded and 62 people were killed (also see Hayem 2013). After, what some criticised as a slow reaction, the government moved decisively to quell the violence calling in the national army to end the rioting.

2. Between 1994 and 2004 there were 150,000 asylum applications received by the South African Department of Home Affairs (Crush 2012, 16). The department is unable to process these applications quickly and the state has been slow in the granting of asylum to applicants and the refugee determination process is currently characterised by considerable backlog. During the period 1994–2011, only 53,000 applicants were granted refugee status. In the period 2008–2012 the number of applications for refugee status has increased and in 2009 alone there were 220,028 new applications (Crush 2012, 17). The vast majority of applications were from sub-Saharan African countries, particularly Zimbabwe (two-thirds of all applicants in 2009) which has suffered economic and political turmoil since 2000.

3. An offensive label for African foreign nationals in South Africa originating from onomatopoeic references to the supposedly ‘strange ways' that the foreign African nationals speak (Nyamnjoh 2006, 39).

4. In a 3 July 2008 address then President Thabo Mbeki paid tribute to the victims of attacks on foreign nationals. The former President seemed to struggle with the idea that xenophobia was widespread and prevalent in his country. During the address he stated that:

What happened during those days was not inspired by possessed nationalism, or extreme chauvinism, resulting in our communities violently expressing the hitherto unknown sentiments of mass and mindless hatred of foreigners – xenophobia …  I heard it said insistently that my people have turned or become xenophobic …  I wondered what the accusers knew about my people which I did not know. And this I must also say—none in our society has any right to encourage or incite xenophobia by trying to explain naked criminal activity by cloaking it in the garb of xenophobia. (Cited in Dodson 2010, 7)

5. A good example of his approach in this matter is his statement in a 2013 debate in the country's National Assembly:

I think that at times there's a bit of an exaggeration, where people say that xenophobia is a big problem in South Africa. I think that is a bit of an exaggeration, although I am not saying it's not there, because, at times when incidents occur, it is seen, particularly when people react. Foreigners are busy everywhere, in every corner of this country, and they are employed, and that feeling is not that big. (Parliamentary Monitoring Group 2013)

6. The former Editor-in-Chief of the nation's popular weekly Sunday Times Mondli Makanya even went so as far as to characterise this narrative as common sense. Speaking in an interview, he stated:

I think that most black South Africans understand why black, working class South Africans, feel the way they do. It's about economics. It's also about people in transition, about a class of people arriving below them, undercutting them and competing with them in a context where they must scramble, of high unemployment, where the state is absent. (Cited in Desai 2008, 58)

7. This was noted in a book by Von Holdt et al. (2011) on eight case studies where service delivery protests and xenophobic attacks occurred. Von Holdt et al. (2011) argues that protesters were engaged in a struggle to enforce a national citizenship regime though which they are defined as citizens with the right to lay claims to a redistribution of resources through the simultaneous exclusion of foreign nationals as non-citizens. In this paradigm the accumulation of resources by foreigners is seen as illegitimate (also see Misago 2012 who refers to the growth of nativist revivalism in the country).

8. Economic status was determined by a subjective self-identification measure. Respondents were asked: ‘would you describe yourself as belonging to the: (1) lower class; (2) working class; (3) middle class; (4) upper middle class or (5) upper class?’

9. Bivariate analysis (using Analysis of Variance with Scheffe as the post hoc test) was employed to test the results. The results indicated that the higher an individual on the post-apartheid ladder in 2012, the more likely that individual is to be selective in their acceptance of foreigners. To test this association further, multinominal regression analysis was used to predict categorical placement for our immigrant sentiment measure. The results reveal socio-economic position was associated with selecting selective acceptance over complete acceptance but not complete rejection over complete acceptance. Goodness-of-fit tests (using standard measures contracted by McFadden as well as Cragg and Uhler on whether the model fit the data) revealed that the economic indicators in the model do not adequately explain public sentiments towards immigrants. This seems to suggest that other, non-economic, factors may be better predictors of public attitudes towards immigrants.

10. Drawing on research conducted in 2010 in focus group interviews with municipal officials in five urban South African municipalities Landau, Segatti and Misago (2011) found that although some municipal officials display a positive attitude, most tended to perceive foreign immigrants as threats to social order and economic prosperity in their municipalities.

11. Emidio Macia died after being dragged for metres attached to the back of a police van and then assaulted (Mail and Guardian 2013). A subsequent report revealed deep cuts on arms, abrasions on his face and lower limbs, bruised ribs and testicles, bleeding and water on the brain. His death was caused, in the end, by a lack of oxygen.